Message from the Pastor
Click here for a five-minute sermon clip answering the question, “What is the Gospel?”
Thank you for visiting our church’s website. While this site is a brief introduction to our church and how to contact or visit us, we do want to make the Gospel prominent as it is why we exist, why we are reaching out to you, and how God by His sovereign grace is saving souls.
There are many ways to share the Gospel from the Scriptures with you, as all Scriptures are ultimately pointing to the Gospel as fully revealed in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, the King of Kings. On that note, I do encourage you to listen to the sermons available on this website. But I’d still like to briefly share the Gospel with you here, and my favorite place to begin with is Acts chapter 20 verse 21, where Paul writes to the church of Ephesus that, both in house-to-house visitation and public proclamation over three years in their presence, he taught them “repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.” That in a nutshell is the Gospel.
Repentance toward God.
First, you must realize that you are in a terrible state before God outside of Jesus Christ. We are in a fallen world, and this hardly needs to be proven. But it is a direct result of the curse because of our first parents’ sin of disobedience in the garden. You and I are born into sin, and manifest it as sinners in need of being reconciled with our Holy Creator. Adam and Eve died as a result of their sin, and death is coming after you and me too. You and I in and of ourselves, and outside of Christ, are doomed in our unrighteousness which was lost when Adam and Eve, who were created righteous and good, fell from the estate wherein they were created and were kicked out of the Garden of Eden where God walked and talked with them. And we are born into this predicament with no hope but to trust in the promise of the Seed of the Woman who would crush the Seed of the Serpent that deceived our first parents (Genesis 3:14, 15).
King David himself laments our situation: “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalm 51:5). You see, we are morally contaminated from birth. This is explains why you and I hurt each other and neglect the world around us. It it is why we all need to come clean before the Lord and not claim we have anything good to represent us before God in and of ourselves.
Paul, who persecuted Christians before Christ converted Him, reminds us what the Old Testament tells us: “There is none righteous, no, not one …” (Romans 3:10) and that ” … all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).
But Paul then tells us the remedy for our fallen and cursed situation: “Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (Romans 3:24-26).
You see, you can be declared righteous and acceptable and thus allowed into God’s presence as our first parents once enjoyed. And that is by believing on Jesus Christ’s righteousness in place of your own, as He alone lived the perfect life on this earth. And that is by believing on Jesus Christ crucified to pay for your sins and satisfy the justice of the Father. Herein we see both God’s justice and His mercy. He sacrifices neither. Our works earn us only punishment, but God’s gift gives life to whosever will believe: “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23).
You must know that outside of union with Jesus Christ, God’s Son, you are currently under God’s wrath.
John, one of Christ’s closest disciples, tells us that “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36). So the question is, do you believe on Jesus Christ to save you? If you do not, you simply remain under the curse of this world already. If you do, or if you will, you have everlasting life. And while you still endure the curse upon this world in general, you will escape God’s final wrath on Judgment Day and be welcomed in to God’s presence again, where “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).
Faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus came to save sinners. It is what God the Father and He the Son covenanted to do on behalf of His elect before the beginning of time (Psalm 2, Psalm 110). You simply need to die to yourself and your own “good works”, trust in His righteous life and cross-work to be credited to you, and take up your cross and follow Him as the fruit of keeping in repentance. This is the Gospel:
“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (John 3:14-19).
I implore you to be reconciled to God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as Judgment Day approaches. And if God saves you through belief, you will want to sing praises to Him in the assembly of believers and serve along side them as the family of God until Christ returns in Glory.
– Pastor Grant